


Mole: An adventure in cooking

by kisahawklin



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Cooking, Gen, Meta, Team Tasty Nomz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is meta and pics of my first attempt to make Rick Bayless's mole as an homage to coinin's awesome family/food/awesome fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mole: An adventure in cooking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coinin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coinin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In All the Tongues of Men and Angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/474258) by [coinin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coinin/pseuds/coinin). 



So, I haven't had the opportunity to read Coinin's lovely story yet, but in my head, I was basically like Jensen trying to cook for Cougar… and failing miserably. :D

I started with [Rick Bayless's Oaxacan Mole recipe](http://solstice-calendar.dreamwidth.org/16989.html), which he won Top Chef Masters with. I have wanted to try that recipe since I saw the first Top Chef Masters three or four years ago now. So I sat down, looked over the ingredient list, and started shopping online. There are some chilis involved that are only available at certain times of the year – and for a while it looked like I wasn't going to be able to find them. But soleta prevailed, and zocalito.net had the nigh-impossible-to-find chihuacles. Then it was mexgrocer.net and gourmetsleuth.com for a bunch of other ingredients, from several different kinds of peppers to avocado leaves and Mexican chocolate.

(Click on the pictures for a huge version.)

[ ](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN01.JPG)

Once I'd gathered all the ingredients (and a number of new kitchen implements \o/), it was time to start the recipe.

We were almost defeated from the start – soleta was hacking from de-seeding the peppers while I got our kitchen ready to cook in (it may have taken a bit). I helped with the last couple of peppers – bare-handed (she was smart enough to wear gloves) – and stupidly, I didn't wash my hands before cooking. So I somehow poked a peppery finger on the very edge of my nose, causing terrible pain and heat.

I washed my hands and washed down the area and we finally got back to the plan and started with step one – put the seeds (where a lot of the spice is, yo) and a torn up tortilla in a pan and toast until black.

They started out like this:

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN02.JPG)

And ended up like this:

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN03.JPG)

But let me tell you – the steps in between nearly killed us. We opened up every window in the house, set up a fan to blow directly on the fire alarm (totally kept it from going off, btw), and set up another fan to ostensibly blow the smoke out of the kitchen. It did not quiiiiiite work like that. The exhaust about the stove did pull a fair amount out of the air, but not so much that we didn't start coughing within a minute of toasting the seeds. The oily smoke coated the back of our throats and we wheezed and coughed and our eyes watered, and soleta put damp cotton balls up her nose and I wet down a dishtowel and wound it around my nose and mouth (and nearly suffocated myself in the process). We barely made it out alive! When the seeds were finally all black, we put them in the blender and waited for the nuts and seeds to toast (whoops, forgot pics of the nuts and seeds). 

One of the fantastic things about the recipe is that he clearly lines up how you are sort of always doing a couple of things at a time, really making use of your time in the kitchen. (Still took us 5 hours, though!)

So while the nuts were toasting, we threw a couple of slices of onion and four cloves of garlic into a pan and started softening those up.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN04.JPG)

Somewhere between the end of the onion and garlic and putting the seeds and nuts in the blender, we put two cups of duck fat into a pan (the recipe calls for lard but we couldn't find any (we were in a bit of a hurry and didn't have time to track down a butcher shop)).

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN05.JPG)

Then came my favorite part of the whole process – frying the peppers in duck fat.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN06.JPG)

It was so cool! They unfurled, just like Rick said they would – and they smelled _amazing_.

[TN07](http://vimeo.com/48651909) from [Kisa Hawklin](http://vimeo.com/user13273569) on [Vimeo](http://vimeo.com).

Once the peppers were all fried and drained, they went into a bowl of hot water to get them to rehydrate.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN08.JPG)

Then we blended up the green tomatoes and tomatillos, the onion, garlic, half-banana and a bunch of spices, and, after half an hour of soaking, the peppers. With the nuts/seeds combo, that made four purees.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN09.JPG)

At this point, things seemed to be going pretty smoothly – everything looked and smelled right, and the smoke had been blown out of the house so we didn't have to keep up with our makeshift mouth and nose covers.

The next bit is just reducing the four purees down and mixing them together. We started with the green tomato/tomatillo mixture, and I spent a long 15 minutes stirring and scraping and then deciding to keep going since the color was nowhere near the color Rick said it should be. I stirred and scraped it for easily 25 minutes and the color didn't really change.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN10.JPG)

I gave up after 25 minutes and put in the next puree, scraping and stirring and hopping from foot to foot because I'd been standing for three or four hours by that point.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN11.JPG)

Next up was the seed and nut puree, and the mole finally got the chocolatey color I was looking for, but it started to smell burnt – not like slightly earthy and burnt, but just… dead, burnt.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN12.JPG)

After that it was the peppers and that didn't help. 

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN13.JPG)

It looked gorgeous but smelled horrible. You can see the smoke in the pot in the next pic – I'm pretty sure it was burned beyond repair at that point.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN14.JPG)

After that it was adding the Mexican chocolate, chicken broth and avocado leaves and letting it simmer. It looks goooooooorgeous:

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN15.JPG)

And even better, deeper and darker and oh-so-pretty, after those ingredients all simmered together for a while:

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN16.JPG)

But when we put it through the strainer into the dish, we could smell how burnt it was, and I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that the whole thing was going to go down the drain.

[](http://soleta.net/kisa/TN17.JPG)

I tasted it and it was super-burnt and still super-spicy. I might have had crappy mole in my life, but it's never been five-star spicy. This basically tasted like those burnt seed pods looked up top, there.

Sadly, the amount of work and the uncomfortableness of the spicy elements means we probably won't try it again, but I'd love to see if someone else could make this work. I adore mole sauce and would like to know if someday the recipe might be worth another try (and it was really just ~~Jensen's~~ my ineptitude in the kitchen that killed it).


End file.
